


throwback

by ninemoons42



Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bullying, Crossing Timelines, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Inspired by Fanart, Inspired by Music, Kid Fic, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-21
Updated: 2012-10-21
Packaged: 2017-11-16 17:31:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/542026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ninemoons42/pseuds/ninemoons42
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Inspired by <a href="http://xmfc-art.tumblr.com/post/33931390597/source">this</a>. Written for <a href="http://cottoncandy-bingo.dreamwidth.org/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://cottoncandy-bingo.dreamwidth.org/"><b>cottoncandy_bingo</b></a>. Prompt: forever. My card is <a href="http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/208216.html">here</a>.</p>
    </blockquote>





	throwback

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this](http://xmfc-art.tumblr.com/post/33931390597/source). Written for [](http://cottoncandy-bingo.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**cottoncandy_bingo**](http://cottoncandy-bingo.dreamwidth.org/). Prompt: forever. My card is [here](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/208216.html).

title: throwback  
author: [](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/profile)[](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/)**ninemoons42**  
word count: approx. 1360  
fandom: X-Men: First Class [movieverse]  
characters: Erik Lehnsherr, Charles Xavier, the Stepford Cuckoos  
rating: PG  
warnings: angst, grief and mourning, brief discussion of the Holocaust, brief discussion of bullying.  
notes: Inspired by [this](http://xmfc-art.tumblr.com/post/33931390597/source). Written for [](http://cottoncandy-bingo.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**cottoncandy_bingo**](http://cottoncandy-bingo.dreamwidth.org/). Prompt: forever. My card is [here](http://ninemoons42.dreamwidth.org/208216.html).

  
Erik comes to slowly, in flashes of sense-knowledge, in half-remembered words. His body battered by extended combat, and by the separation from his Brotherhood. The shock of someone tearing his helmet off, followed by voices in his head: musical and distant. Five faces looking at him, identical in form and yet showing completely different emotions. Pity, regret, sympathy, kindness, determination. Five voices pronouncing his name.

Even in his dreams he feels as though he’s been falling forever: falling into one terrible situation after another, falling into scenes of the past. Scenes of pain and of loss and of mourning. A galling reminder of what he’s had and what he’s lost. It’s not a coincidence that his nightmares have come back with a vengeance, and that the worst of them began to torment him again after Cuba, after a storm of metal and fire, after sulfur stench mixing with the hot iron of the blood on his hands.

He’s trapped in a memory of shoveling ash and scorched bones when there’s a very light touch to his temple, almost familiar. _May I?_

Erik shakes his head. He has experienced gentleness like this before: a sweet warm brush of thought, tentative, almost too careful. The memory used to make him smile; now it only makes him cringe away.

“Oh,” someone says from very close by. “I’m so sorry. Will this be better? Speaking, I mean?”

“Not so loud,” he groans.

The voice replies in a near-whisper, “All right.” There is a pause, and then: “You have a strange mind, and terrible dreams. And you’re like me. Who are you?”

His eyes fly open at last. “Like me? How are you like me?”

“You can do things,” is the prompt reply. “I’m pretty sure it’s not my – ah – ability making my pens dance. That has to be you. Right?”

Erik struggles to sit up, and looks around wildly for the source of the voice, the source of the thoughts washing against him.

And he blinks. The boy can’t be more than twelve or thirteen at the most, and is small for his size, too – but there he is, curled up in the heavy armchair next to the bed, wrapped up in a fraying dressing-gown. To Erik, he looks dignified and strange and _young_ , and he seems to be aware of it, too, if the twitch of his mouth that threatens to become both amusement and irritation at once is anything to go by.

He smiles when Erik sees him, and points to the desk in one corner of the room. Over the desk hangs a large framed photograph of a faint black X in a diffuse cloud of gray, and below it, on a low bookshelf, is a planetary model of an atom. Between these two objects, five pens hang in midair, dancing around each other in an intricate spiral.

Erik can feel them now, steel and brass and faint echoes of gold. At least one of the nibs is exposed and it catches the faint light coming in from the windows with every movement. The pens make him think about copybooks and complicated equations and gritty white chalk on a blackboard, on a wall, on a sidewalk made up of broken bricks. After another moment’s reflection he reluctantly puts the pens down, and they glide smoothly and silently down to the blotter.

There is something terribly familiar about the boy’s face, when Erik looks at him again – but this time, the first thing he notices are the faint bruises ringing the pale throat. Anger rises in him, a cold righteous fury, and he blurts out, “Who did that to you?”

The boy winces and looks away and huddles into the chair defensively. “I – I don’t think that’s important, I can deal with him, with _them_ , and you don’t have to worry about me.” In a smaller voice he adds, “And I appreciate your thoughts, I know you’re thinking about protecting me. They feel good but – but they’re hurting me, too.”

Erik rears back, and consciously tries to calm his mind. There are only a few people in the world who can force him to do something like this; it’s not something that comes naturally to him. He pushes away the thought of the one who’d tried to teach him a better technique, and clears his throat brusquely when he succeeds, marginally. “Is this better?”

The boy tries to smile. “You’re not very used to people.”

“I have been as I am for a long time,” Erik says. “For far too long. Perhaps I have always been made to be alone.”

“I see. It’s better now, thank you.” The boy hops out of the chair and very nearly stumbles on the hem of his dressing-gown – so he takes it off with an impatient little _tch_ and drapes it carefully over the seat.

Erik’s eyebrows rise at the striped pajamas. Blue, though faded and plain, nothing like the vivid startling color of the boy’s eyes. Thin blue lines on the cloth, clean and smelling faintly of soap, or he would have thought of grime and yellow stars, and this boy is so far removed from barbed wire and ashes, but he still has to calm himself down again.

By the time he accomplishes that task the boy is sitting near the foot of the bed, swinging his feet idly, enough that he kicks his slippers off. “Maybe I should tell you,” he says, “what I can – what I can read from you. From your mind. That’s what I can do, you see. I can read and know people’s thoughts. I don’t pry, of course, that’s impolite. But that’s what people think I do, and so, something like this happens.”

The matter-of-fact way in which he gestures at his throat nearly undoes Erik’s work; he has to fight to keep his voice and his thoughts steady when he asks, gruff as a result of his efforts, “This – _happens_ – to you? Getting hurt?”

The boy looks wry and thoughtful. “Only when I forget. When I forget, I make mistakes. When I make mistakes, I get caught. Sometimes. So I am learning.”

“You should fight back,” Erik says.

“I do,” the boy says, and he smiles, and he puts his fingers to his temple.

Erik freezes, and breathes out a name. _“Charles.”_

The smile drops off the boy’s face. There is a very long moment of silence, and then: “T-that’s me,” the boy says. He looks just as surprised as Erik feels, his eyes wide with shock. “How did you know – _Erik,_ your name is Erik – how did you know – ?”

Erik is overwhelmed by sudden knowledge, the knowledge he’s been bottling up for what feels like forever now: Charles on the beach and Charles in a wheelchair, the two of them facing each other across a ruined city street, an unsteady truce over a granite chessboard.

And he thinks back to the five women in white, to their hands clasped together, to their words that he can now hear clearly, as clearly as though they were in the room with him and this boy. _A journey to the past. Remember. Think. He was alone. You have always been alone. Stay together. Ask for forgiveness. Ask for help._

It’s too much, it’s not enough, and Erik flings himself out of the bed, and collapses in a heap at the boy’s feet – at Charles’s feet, warm and small and _alive_ in his hands. He feels Charles twitch away from him and he follows, projecting, downing all the barriers, and foremost in his mind is the refrain, _I am sorry, I am so sorry...._

 _Erik, please, I don’t understand – but this, I can do this,_ the boy thinks – and then those thin warm arms are wrapping around his shoulders. Charles is on his feet, small and fearless and trusting; Charles is pulling him in and holding him close, and Erik follows suit, puts his arms and the cape that he is still wearing around this boy, this Charles. He hangs on for his atonement.

He hangs on for his heart.

Charles says, _I don’t know why you feel so sad, why you say you’re sorry. I want to help. Please, let me help._

Erik says, _Yes._  



End file.
